|
Paula Keezer Outdoor Adventure Girl! |
|
Costa Rica |
|
It was a very good time for us. |
|
April 2005 |
|
A romantic adventure that will always be in my heart. Paula
|
|
Those who are willing to exchange freedom for security deserve neither. -- Ben Franklin |
|
Tropical nights, spectacular sunsets, romantic settings, hot Latin (never mind!) and lots of Costa Rican roads where DR650 dirt bikes are supreme :-) I started out with bumps on my body. What the heck were these bumps. Well, my house was in the final throws of getting rid of a flea infestation. The bumps, I’m sure now, were flea bites. But I was nuts on the fact that maybe it was some form of skin cancer and was dreading being in in a third world if I got infected as well. Craig was great, he calmed my nerves telling me that I was on vacation and to leave all those thoughts behind. I did and felt much better. We arrived early in the morning in San Jose, quickly passed through customs, exchanged a few dollars and took a long bumpy taxi ride to our motorcycles near Atenas where we cooled off and drank glass bottled Coke! Our first day we headed north to Fortuna where we found a lovely new Motel facing Volcan Arenal, a very active volcano. We sat naked in the cool evening air and watched the glow on top of Arenal. Day two we hit the dirt, rock, stones, well what ever you call those back Costa Rican roads. Craig flew ahead while I wondered at what it would feel like to hit those loose cobbles at 50Km hour! Needless to say, we passed everything in site. Cars could only do 10Km hr or so and were zig zaging all over the road to avoid pot holes. We just flew over the potholes! Yikes! We circumnavigated Lake Arenal (a large man made lake by Volcan Arenal) and came to rest at Santa Alena where we found a nice little room within walking distance of the town. We came here so that we could do the canopy tours where we got to follow a several kilometer path that had many walking suspension bridges. The bridges took you to the top of the jungle canopy where we wondered at the rich life of the tropical cloud forest. We spent a good part of the morning in the jungle and decided to take a shot at getting to the coast. Our target Playa del Coco! We rolled in late in the afternoon (barely avoiding speeding tickets) and found a second floor room with a beautiful ocean view. A couple of nice cold servessa and the comfort of being together in a tropical paradise was, well, quite intoxicating! Playa del Coco was our target so that Craig could put his diving skills to use. Craig headed out early in the morning to dive and I headed out to snorkel! The coral reefs and sea life, even at the shallow depths of a snorkel were amazing. I made use of my underwater camera case and took a zillion pictures. Only a few really came out well though. Craig and I got back together late that afternoon and mellowed out in one of many amazingly wonderful sunsets. |
|
Then it was off to take as many gnarly nearly unmarked dirt roads along the Nicoya Peninsula coast as possible. Water crossings, HUGE snakes, howler monkeys. Hmm this must be the jungle! So many little towns! San Juanillo, Rayo, Garza. We stopped for an evening in Samara where we saw even more spectacular sunsets! We went body surfing the warm waters, lounged in hammocks, drank wonderful coconuts drinks and had ear to ear smiles on our faces. Life could not be better! The trip was passing half over and we found ourselves in Malpais where we had a wonderful bungalow (except for a bazillion ants!) and great swimming pool where we watched a full eclipse of the sun! As a follow up to that spectacular show, we saw the most colorful and stunning sunset that, well, that I had ever seen. It was the kind of sunset where the sun goes down below the horizon and you think, well, that was nice, then the whole sky starts to light up with colors from green to purple to yellow to orange to red and just keeps on getting brighter for another hour after the sun was down! A beautiful sunset, a wonderful boyfriend. My heart will remember them forever. We did our obligatory visit to Montezuma and found a place to stay near Tambor where I managed to lose my trusty GPS (ouch). The final day of the trip involved getting to a ferry. Nearly there, my motorcycle died. Just died. It was some sort of electrical problem. We had not quite made it over the last hill to the ferry but we were fortunate to have a local Tica with a quad stop and help us over the hill. Craig nearly got ripped off the bike as he and the local attempted to tow it up the hill. We got it onto the ferry and called the owner who brought a truck to Puntarenas and took my broken bike and I back to Atenas. Craig used the last moments of the trip to test out the remaining bike! All and all a really great trip and one I will always cherish and remember.
Paula
|